“It is three times as large as the rafter crisis of 1994,” said Miami immigration lawyer Wilfredo Allen, The Washington Post reported.

Not since the Mariel boatlift of 1980, he said, when 125,000 landed in South Florida, have so many Cubans headed north.

This began when Ecuador announced no visa requirements though they just changed that for Cubans.

About 4,000 U.S.-bound Cubans have become stranded in Costa Rica since last month, when Nicaragua stopped letting them pass through. Another 1,000 overwhelmed a tiny Panamanian border town, where officials declared a “sanitary emergency” because there wasn’t enough food, water or shelter. Others are held at immigrant detention centers in Mexico.

Cubans have a saying, “Lo que te den, cógelo,” which means “whatever they’re giving, take it” and it applies to the scarce basic staples that are rationed by the government. It also applies to seizing other opportunities like those we give in the US.

For fifty years, Cubans have received special benefits which should now be ended.

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 includes the “wet-foot, dry-foot” rule, which essentially bestows U.S. residency and welfare benefits on any islander who touches American soil.

Cubans who never lived or worked in the United States retire to Florida and live off food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare. The numbers are growing and have grown five-fold since 2010. As a result, Miami-Dade is number one in elderly welfare in the nation.

Cubans have a special status and get benefits immediately, without proper screening. They simply have to say they’re refugees. That might have been a good idea after the Cuban revolution but it no longer is and it’s not necessary. They need to wait five years like everyone else because we have set up a retirement system and it’s too costly.

It’s well known in Cuba that you come here when you are a senior. We have 90 year olds coming and we know that they cost our healthcare system a great deal.

“They’re getting cheap apartments, food stamps,” said Cuban-born attorney Pedro Fuentes-Cid of Tampa. “They tell their friends in Cuba, and they come over,” the Sun-Sentinel reported during a recent investigation.

The welfare benefits are better than pensions in Cuba which are about $7 a month.

They certainly aren’t refugees fleeing anything because they make frequent trips back home. Citizens who came from other countries originally are complaining – they can’t afford to make trips back to their countries of birth but they have to pay taxes for these fake refugees.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) say American generosity is being abused by Cuban migrants who obtain U.S. residency and then begin traveling back to the island to ferry merchandise, run small businesses or get cheap dental work.

They get government assistance in the United States for up to seven years even if they never lived here a day and it’s longer if they become citizens.

Some move in with children or other relatives already here and receive the benefits. it doesn’t matter what their family’s incomes are. Some are making very good salaries and would never qualify for assistance.

SSI had become so popular among elderly Chinese in California that they considered it a right of immigration and viewed it nonchalantly, like getting a library card, a University of California professor testified during a 1996 welfare reform debate. Congress cut new immigrants off of SSI but made an exception for Cubans and grandfathered in some other immigrants who were already here or had long work histories in the U.S.

This is just plain stupid. We borrow 40 cents on every dollar we spend.

By the way, Cuba is aligned with Iran, Russia, and all the narco-terrorist states.

We report the news the media won't.
The Sentinel provides news, opinion and commentary, analysis, factual and original content, mostly political, usually right-of-center, for a Conservative, Libertarian, and Republican audience.
If you click the subcategories, you should find the general information you need to know about us. Please make special note of the terms of use.
Thank you for taking an interest in our site.
We welcome information, corrections, news stories and submissions.